A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

the medical, the magical, and the miraculous 261
recalcitrance of some sinners is noted: by their own volition, they will
not seek the physician or allow themselves to be restored to health—the
consequence is death. The same admonition is found in Hildegard’s letter
to Prior Frederick, whom she chides for nurturing the falling sickness
(cadentem morbum) and then implores to seek the unguent that heals—
in order to live forever.56
Although the Trinitarian Father, Son, or Holy Spirit may assume the
role of the healer, the Son almost always efffects the cure: Christ, through
his body and his blood, is the true medicine, and his incarnation cleanses
from the wounds of sin.57 In Scivias 1.3, the analogy is developed further,
with God as Great Physician likened to the healer, and maladies of various
degrees of seriousness compared with lesser and greater sins; as the healer
demands payment to cure a grave condition, so too does God expect more
profound repentance from those whose faults are greater.58 Only once,
in her letter to the priest Conrad, does Hildegard designate a religious
as a “physician.” It is not only the sinful or the habitually wicked who
are ailing, but also the baptized who fall short of true devotion to God.
Hildegard distinguishes individuals who—either through weak eyes or
crippled feet—demonstrate lack of commitment to accomplishing God’s
will, from those with clear eyes and strong feet who “meditat[e] on the
pure and brilliant splendor, marching forward vigorously in the womb of
the image.”59 Likewise, the merging of the physical and the spiritual is
found in her letter to the hospitaler seeking medicine for his sins, when
she notes that his soul is swollen and bloated by doubt and trepidation.60
Illness as punishment fijigures prominently in Hildegard’s theology.
Related to original sin, it is described in book 2 of the Cause et cure, which
56 Epistolarium, I, 47, p. 116, ll. 6–11: “et iterum in nociua pestilentia colis cadentem morbum,
quasi non exquirenda sit causa salutis . . . Aspice ad me et semper require unguentum
medicine in die et in turbine, et in eternum uiues.”
57 Scivias 2.6, p. 239, ll. 495–96: “quoniam etiam Filius meus medicinam uulnerum
uestrorum in paenitentia attulit”; 2.6., p. 249, ll. 809–10: “ruminantes ueram medicinam
in corpore eiusdem Vnigeniti mei”; and 3.8, p. 502, ll. 856–57: “ac continens maximam
medicinam quae tersit uulnera peccatorum per incarnationem ipsius.” Occasionally other
members of the Trinity assume this role, e.g. the Holy Spirit in Hildegard’s letter to Canon
Udalric, Epistolarium, I, 53R, p. 132, ll. 10–11: “Tunc columba dabit tibi unguentum, et uulnus
tuum terget.”
58 Ibid. 1.3, p. 58, ll. 600–08: “Ego enim sum magnus medicus omnium languorum, . . . et
ostendam tibi misericordiam meam et uitam aeternam tibi dabo.”
59 Scivias (Eng.), pp. 195–96; Scivias 2.4, p. 169, ll. 343–46: “Et ex his qui ipsum purum et
lucidum splendorem considerant, quidam claros oculos et fortes pedes habent ac in uentre
eiusdem imaginis fortiter incedunt.”
60 Epistolarium, I, 88, p. 213, ll. 2–4.